


Uncharted Depths

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-07
Updated: 2005-10-07
Packaged: 2017-10-03 07:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Can we once go to Florida and not discover monsters in the uncharted depths and verdant woods?" she asks out of nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uncharted Depths

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-"Agua Mala"  
> A/N: Written ages ago for [**scooly42**](http://scooly42.livejournal.com/)  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this and no infringement is intended.

Scully was a daily miracle, a new blessing every day like some sort of strange calendar. She had been a gift to him in the beginning from the wary Them, Section Chief Blevins and his smoky companion. A Trojan agent, full of science and logic. Diana hadn't worked, so they'd sent him a short redhead with faith in God but no eye for the sky. She had been so serious, sexy underneath the dumpy suit, surprisingly ready to go toe-to-toe with him on big issues like his sanity.

That had been the first miracle, the way she treated him like a friendly eccentric instead of a mad leper. The second miracle was when, in the chilly graveyard rain, he had puzzle-pieced his theory together for her and she had laughed, soaking wet and listening to him, delighted to listen to him.

He couldn't ever remember anyone taking that much joy in what he'd said, whatever the reason.

Her hair floats around her face in air-dried waves, still a little damp here and there in the curls. She had been soaked in rain for his sake again, bonesoaked in a hurricane. He is struck by the things she did for him. This was a joyride, not even a case. I need you, he said, and she followed. Her requisite grumbling was a ritual they both ignored. Now they are going home and she is fresh with the glow of success and the praise of cranky Arthur Dales. She touches Mulder's collar from time to time, peeling away the fabric of the turtleneck to examine his lesions. He cannot even think of it as her taking a liberty, he is so struck with wonder by her compassion and her skill. Her fingertips are cool at his throat and he is pleased that she is so possessive of him.

Mulder had been watching Scully with different eyes since she had pulled him out of the Sargasso. She was his knight in a designer suit come to his rescue again; she had scolded him when he woke and he loved her for that, that she never gave him an easy way out, and he told her so. She brushed him off in her cool Scully way, but he saw the way she scrutinized him from across the room when she thought he wasn't looking. He could feel the blue wash of her gaze as it swept over him, the precise calibrations and measurements of her regard.

I love you, he wants to say again, when he sees her with the raw red bundle of the baby in her arms, the baby she'd helped deliver.

He had seen her with children before, with suspects, but generally he had not seen her around people that were not under investigation. It was curious how he had never thought of that. They had worked out a joint solitude, a space of familiar conversations and familiar silences. He was staggered by her doctor's instincts, the immensity of her attention to strangers.

Mulder has found himself profoundly moved before by the sweep of her hair across her cheekbone. He finds he is rendered speechless by the drip of her hair as she conducts impromptu surgery with a Leatherman and a ballpoint pen. Even with his squeamish stomach, he is fascinated. He wants to see her do it again, wants to watch her capable hands saving lives. He has seen her do autopsies, impressed by the precision of her cuts despite the mortal nonchalance of her subjects. Her field master attitude in the throes of emergency makes him want to snap her a salute: he is amazed by her presence and the way she commands tall brawny men to do her bidding. She just hits five foot three in her sopping sneakers, but he imagines she is ten feet tall when she bellows orders and brandishes her weapon. Her determination is reassuring: the building residents submit peacefully to her authority. Scully takes the world out of skew.

If she is so passionate about the lives of bit players in their story, how must she be when she is operating on him? Selfsame Mulder, whose skin she must prize somewhat, or else she would have left him. Scully does not mince around the issues of their partnership: she ignores them or charges head on. She lacks nuance at times and he loves her even more in those unguarded moments, those times when it is clear that she must care, somehow.

He thinks of her leaving him although she is sitting beside him in the hard plastic airport chairs. She could get up to use the restroom and something on the flight board could catch her eye. She could change her ticket, wing it to anywhere in the world, and be shut of him. She could go to Berlin with her bad German. She could go somewhere tropical to wear sarongs and sip frozen drinks on her off time. He tries not to think about that, Scully in a sarong. He has enough trouble hiding his appreciation of her unrevealing suits. Scully could travel the world and find the safe, ordinary life she deserves and he would be sitting in this awkward chair waiting for her when she returned and sighed over his stasis.

Instead she stays to nag him about his eating habits and to occasionally fall asleep on his shoulder, and it gives him hope that the sun will rise again.

"Can we once go to Florida and not discover monsters in the uncharted depths and verdant woods?" she asks out of nowhere, doing the crossword in the paper he bought, her voice rich with amusement at the archaic twist to her words.

"Sure," he says, trying not to sound startled. "You want to hit the beach? Get a little tan? It's bikini season. If anyone gets jellyfished, you can pull out your doctor skills again."

"Probably better to save up my doctor skills for the next time you pull an idiot stunt," she says absently, pushing the top of the pen into the soft underneath of her lower lip. "Besides, I can't imagine you're in a beach mood right now. Salt water would sting in those welts."

Mulder considers telling her the real motivation is the bikini. He thinks he could say how much he wants to do nice things for her, how all these half-assed excursions are meant to be an entertaining challenge instead of an example of some latent homicidal/sucidal tendancy of his, but he thinks the Christmas ghosts have destroyed any hope of making her see it that way with their lovers' pact psychobabble. With Scully sometimes he reverts back to adolescence, screaming lust running rampant along his veins hitched to a pathological need to seem impressive and worthy.

Their flight is called, and they file onto the plane. Mulder lets Scully slip into the window seat even though she will sleep the whole time, and he puts her bag into the overhead bin before settling into the seat next to her. They jockey briefly for space on the armrest and she puts her shoulder against his arm and pretends it's not on purpose. He thinks of the time they shared a bed in Kansas under the extreme duress of bovine-related hotel destruction and how he woke up with her feet against the backs of his calves. He wonders if she thinks about it too. She has been more touchy lately. The few inches of air that always separated them have diminished to a mere breath. Scully leans away to arrange her pillow against the plane side in her fussy way, as if her head won't be lolling on his shoulder in half an hour, and his arm feels cold.

"Thank you, Mulder," she says, and smiles - smiles! - at him. "I had fun."

I love you, he wants to say, but instead he smiles back.


End file.
